Panel at press conference. From left: Mike Dettinger, Mike Anderson, Kevin Baker, and Marty Ralph

Contact:  Dr. F. Martin (Marty) Ralph

AGU Press Conference Announces New California Observing Network

Marty Ralph, chief of the NOAA Physical Sciences Division's Water Cycle Branch, and Program Director of the Hydrometeorology Testbed, led off the discussions and was followed by Kevin Baker, the Meteorologist-in-Charge at the NWS San Francisco Bay Area Weather Forecast Office, Mike Anderson, the California State Climatologist at the CA-DWR, and Mike Dettinger, a research scientist with the USGS and Scripps Institution of Oceanography. These presentations were followed by a question and answer period for members of the press. A video of the press conference is available on YouTube.

The press conference was timely given that California was experiencing a series of strong winter storms containing atmospheric rivers. As part of the project with CA-DWR, NOAA engineers will install the first of four permanent atmospheric river observatories (AROs) on the California coast at Bodega Bay later this winter (see the NOAA News story). Other ARO installations will follow at Eureka, Point Sur, and Goleta. The entire network will be installed by April 2014. The AROs are part of the 100+ station observing network designed to detect and monitor the atmospheric and terrestrial conditions that lead to flooding. To take full advantage of these observations, the project uses data assimilation and computer modeling to help improve weather forecasts. Decision support tools for forecasters and water managers are also being developed.